That is the documentary record at its most direct.

One journal entry.

Two sentences.

The facts they contain: she survived a winter in the Blue Mountains with her children.

She did it because of specific knowledge she possessed.

She positioned herself for rescue because she understood the trade’s rhythms.

Everything else that has been said in this account follows from those two sentences, built out of the documentary record of the Astorian enterprise, the historical geography of the Columbia Plateau, the practical knowledge of cold-climate survival that Indigenous communities of the northern interior possessed and transmitted, and the basic logic of what it would have taken to do what she did.

The documentary record is sparse.